Tokyo was a city holding its breath, its familiar, vibrant soul buried beneath the grim, grey skin of fortification. From her perch atop a ruined skyscraper in Shinjuku, Sakura Miyamoto looked out at her home. She saw the new energy shield projectors, the anti-air batteries, the ceaseless military patrols. They were preparing for a battle in three dimensions.
They were wrong. The enemy was coming from the fourth.
In her lap, the two ancient scrolls, woven from shadow and starlight, hummed with a low, dissonant vibration. For days, she had used them as a compass, not to find the third scroll, but to listen to the groaning symphony of a space that was being stretched to its breaking point. She felt the tension in the fabric of reality itself, a strain that was sharpest, most painful, in one specific direction.
Her gaze settled on the distant, needle-like form of the Tokyo Skytree, the tallest structure in the city. It was not just a landmark. It was a wound waiting to happen. The scrolls told her with absolute certainty: that was the epicenter. That was the point where the sky would tear, where the Vultures would bleed into their world.
She was holding the single most valuable piece of intelligence on the planet. And she was going to trade it.
Her personal quest, her family's honor... it all seemed so small now. But to face the coming storm, she needed the third scroll. She needed the final key to unlock her full power. And the scrolls' whispers, combined with the fragmented histories in her family's koden, told her where it was hidden: a place of ultimate tradition and impenetrable security. The Imperial Palace. A fortress within a fortress, a place a lone ghost like her could never hope to breach.
She needed an army. Or at least, the keys to get past one.
The message appeared on Mei-Ling's private, encrypted channel without a source, without a trace, a digital ghost. It was a single, elegant line of text: I KNOW WHERE THEY WILL STRIKE. TO THE METER AND THE SECOND. I WANT TO TRADE. It was followed by a set of coordinates for a meeting place: the center of the deserted, cherry-tree-lined path of Chidorigafuchi, a place of silent, poetic beauty amidst the military buildup.
Mei-Ling went alone, against all protocol. She found Sakura standing under a bare cherry tree, a solitary, silent figure in the wind.
"You're a hard person to find," Mei-Ling said, her hand resting near the pistol at her hip. "The 'Ninja Ghost of Shibuya.' You have information for us."
"I have the answer to the only question that matters," Sakura replied, her voice calm and quiet. "In exchange, I want access. To the Imperial Palace. I need something from inside the Fukiage Garden."
Mei-Ling's eyes narrowed. "You want us to help you stage a covert infiltration of the most secure location on the planet, based on an unsubstantiated claim?"
"It is not unsubstantiated," Sakura said. She held up her empty palm. "Watch."
She focused, drawing on the impossible geometries the scrolls had taught her. The air above her hand did not shimmer or glow. It simply... folded. A small, perfect, black line, a miniature fissure in space, appeared in the air, a centimeter long. It was not a hole in space; it was a hole of space. It drank the light around it, a sliver of perfect void. Then, just as silently, it vanished.
Mei-Ling's hand froze above her pistol. Her tactical visor, capable of analyzing every spectrum of light and energy, had registered nothing. It hadn't been an illusion. It was an event. A physical manipulation of reality on a scale her science had no words for.
"The Tokyo Skytree," Sakura said, her voice a soft, final declaration. "The main spire. That is where their primary ship will emerge. I can give you the exact time."
Mei-Ling stared at the young woman before her. She was not a soldier. She was not a scientist. She was something else entirely, a living key to a lock they didn't know existed. The risk of trusting her was immense. The risk of not trusting her was planetary extinction.
"I can't authorize a full infiltration," Mei-Ling said, her voice a low, pragmatic whisper, the words of a spymaster, not a soldier. "But I can create a window. A two-hour security blind spot. You will get your team inside. But you will go in alone." She paused, her gaze hardening. "And Sakura... if your information is wrong, there will be nowhere in this world for you to hide."
Sakura simply nodded. The queen's gambit had been accepted. The game was now in play.